This series of monographs represents continuation on an international basis of the previous series MINERALOGIE UNO PETROGRAPHIE IN EINZELOARSTELLUNGEN, published by Springer-Verlag. The voluminous results arising from recent progress in pure and applied re search increase the need for authoritative reviews but the standard scientific journals are unable to provide the space for them. By their very nature, text-books are unable to consider specific topics in depth and recent research met'hods and results often receive only cursory treat ment. Advanced reference volumes are usually too detailed...

Considerable progress has been made in our understanding of the physicochemical evolution of natural rocks through systematic analysis of the compositional properties and phase relations of their mineral assemblages. This book brings together concepts of classical thermodynamics, solution models, and atomic ordering and interactions that constitute a major basis of such analysis, with appropiate examples of application to subsolidus petrological problems. This book is written for an audience with a senior undergraduate level background in chemistry. Derivations of fundamental thermodynamic...

This monograph was begun with two objectives in mind. The first was to provide a review of research involving the application of neodymium isotopic measurements to pro blems in earth science. In the process of organizing to do this, I realized that the research in this field had produced a need for an updated review of the underlying paradigms. This need had arisen because of the special properties of the samarium-neodymium isotopic system, and because the research had transgressed the traditional boundaries be tween the subfields of earth science. Without such a review, the significance of...

Professor OTTO BRAITSCH'S Entstehung und Stoffbestand der Salz- lagerstiitten has since its publication in 1962 enjoyed a reputation as the most complete and authoritative treatment, in any language, of the geochemistry of evaporites. The issue of this translation will now make it accessible to a much wider circle of readers. The years since first publica- tion of the German edition have seen a great surge of discussion and research on evaporites among English-speaking geologists, and while BRAITSCH'S work was important to some of these it can now no longer be ignored by any. It may be worth...

Since the end of World War II isotope geology has grown into a diversi fied and complex discipline in the earth sciences. It has progressed by the efforts of a relatively small number of specialists, many of whom are physi cists, chemists, or mathematicians who were attracted to the earth sciences by the opportunity to measure and to interpret the isotopic compositions of certain chemical elements in geological materials. The phenomenal growth of isotope geology during the last 25 years is an impressive indi cation of the success of their efforts. We have now entered into a new phase of...

and their identification obviates individual thermochemical studies on every genus. The stability relations among sedimentary carbonate minerals are now more or less well known. The common rock-forming minerals cal cite and dolomite are indeed stable phases in the pertinent systems. Most other carbonate minerals of similar composition which are known to occur in the younger sediments are metastable with respect to calcite, dolomite, and magnesite. This implies that the sedimentation of carbon ates is determined only in part by stability relations. Kinetic factors, which allow the formation of...

My goal in writing this book was to provide an introduction to meteorite science and a handbook on meteorite classification. Insofar as I succeeded it should prove useful both to the practicing professional and to university students at the upper-division and graduate levels. I originally intended the book to be nearly twice as long. The second half was to be a review of properties relating to the origin of each group of meteorites. Chapter XVIII is an example of how these later chapters would have looked, although most would not have been as interpretative. These chapters would have been...

At first glance it may seem presumptuous to want to add yet another to the numerous books on Differential Thermal Analysis (DT A). Thermoanalytical methods have been in use for some time, as shown by the more than five thousand publications containing DT A or TG curves listed by SMOTHERS and CHIANG in the bibliography to their handbook and abstracted in the several volumes of Thermal Analysis Abstracts (TAA), edited by J. P. REDFERN for the International Con federation for Thermal Analysis (ICT A). Every three years the proceed ings of ICT A meetings are published, bringing the latest results...

I was invited to write this book as part of the Minerals, Rocks and Organic Materials Series of Springer-Verlag by Professor Peter J. Wyllie in 1974. Ophiolites have preoccupied me ever since 1948 as a graduate student and up to the present time as part of my research with the U.S. Geological Survey. During this period ophiolite, an obscure European geological term, has attained an ever-increasing importance, is now used to include all fragments of ancient oceanic lithosphere incorporated into the orogenic zones of modern and ancient continental margins, and is a standard part of the plate...